Who We Are

February Epistle

Download the February issue of our newsletter:  The Epistle, February 2009

On the Cover:

Forming A Community

“... with an Alternative, Liberated Imagination that has the courage and the reedom to act in a different vision and a different perception of reality”

My Dear People,

We can sometimes remember first hearing a certain phrase and how it first struck us. An example of such an experience, for me, is when I first heard the words “the religious imagination.” I was in seminary at the time. In retrospect, if I’m honest, I’m a little embarrassed at my initial reaction. I heard the phrase as somehow suggesting that religion was somehow dealing with “make believe” or fiction, that religion was in some way detached from reality. Versus being serious and “realitybased,” to borrow a phrase. What I came to see, or, more aptly, what I came to believe, and believe with all my heart, is that the
imagination is essential to Christianity, essential, that is, if Christianity is to be truly Christ-like, i.e., truly like the Christ whom we call Lord.

I recently had a welcome-to-town lunch with the still-relatively-new pastor of First Baptist Church, Jim Somerville, who, incidentally, will kick off our Lenten preaching series this year. During our thoroughly enjoyable time together, Jim shared with me a quote by the theologian Walter Brueggemann, a passage
Jim came across while reading Brueggemann’s The Hopeful magination,

“The central task of ministry is the formation of a community with an alternative, liberated imagination that has the courage and the freedom to act in a different vision and a different perception of reality.”

Jim told me how he was reading along, read that sentence, kept going, and then said, Whoa!, and then went back and read it again, and re-read it, and re-read it. It has become, for him, a defining expression of what his ministry is, and, not only that, but a defining expression of what we as Christians are meant to
be about, as a community of people gathered around the Risen Christ.

“A community with an alternative, liberated imagination.” “A different vision and a different perception of reality.” One might ask, alternative to what? Liberated from what? Different from what? Those are good questions that deserve reflection, and sustained reflection.

A one-word answer might be: counter-cultural. That is, to be the Church—St. Paul’s Church, in our case—is to see reality—our lives, our church, our city, our world!—differently than the surrounding culture or society does; it is to look for a wisdom deeper than conventional wisdom; it is to look for insight more profound than pundits will give; it is to refuse to swallow the bitter pill of cynicism, and it is to insist—and never stop insisting!—that kindness and compassion and generosity
and reconciliation are not only possible but real and necessary. To be the Church—and here’s where the courage comes in— means that we are also committed to embodying that kindness, that compassion, that generosity, and that reconciling action in our lives as individuals, and in our lives as the community that is
St. Paul’s Church. We want to see things as Jesus does, which is to say, we want to see things as they truly are. And, with Jesus, we want to imagine and act on what might be, what could be, what should be.

Open our eyes, Lord Jesus, to see reality for what it truly is, and set our imaginations free, free for our own sake, for the sake of Richmond, and for the sake of the world!

Your brother in Christ,

Wallace+

 

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